When Sir Walter arrived in England he published an account of the discovery of the large and beautiful country of Guiana. Either he must have been carried away by the excitement of the adventure, or he must have wilfully exaggerated when he described the gold mines so confidently, since no one who followed him ever found so great a treasure of the precious metal as he declared was in existence. Queen Elizabeth could not be prevailed upon to give orders for the planting of a colony in the new land, much as she desired to increase her dominions, and so it was that the English did not really make a settlement in Guiana until the year 1634.
Raleigh went after his return on a great expedition, which ended in the conquest of Cadiz. In this Essex had the chief command, but it was Raleigh's courage and daring that assured the taking of the city.
The favour he was held in at court now began to decline, and the great fame he had earned as a soldier and a navigator had made him many enemies. It is said that he connived with Cecil for the downfall of Essex, and he was charged by those who bore him ill-will with having taken pleasure in witnessing the execution of that nobleman. His own words, spoken just before his death on the scaffold many years later, will best vindicate him from such an accusation. He said that he was all the time in the armory of the Tower, at the end where he could only just see Essex. He shed tears at his death, and grieved that he was not with him, for he had heard that he had desired to be reconciled with him before he died. And it is natural to suppose that these two men, each one indeed at fault, would have been happier, one in dying and the other while he lived, if they had exchanged a few kind words, at which the old bitterness and hatred would have melted away.
The remaining part of the life of Sir Walter Raleigh was a succession of misfortunes and sorrows: at the death of the queen his good fortune may be said to have deserted him. The same year that James the Sixth of Scotland succeeded his cousin Elizabeth, a plot was formed to place on the throne of England in his stead the Lady Arabella Stuart, who was equally descended from Henry the Seventh with himself. The Lords Grey and Cobham, Sir Walter Raleigh, two Catholic priests, and several others were accused of conniving at it, and arrested for high treason. How far Raleigh was implicated it is difficult now to decide: it is probable that he knew of the plot, because he was the intimate friend of Lord Cobham. He was carried to Winchester, where sentence of death was passed upon him, and he remained there a whole month, daily expecting to be led to the scaffold. At the urgent entreaty of Lady Raleigh the king commuted the sentence of death to imprisonment in the Tower; and there, on the 15th of December, 1603, Raleigh took up his abode, followed by his affectionate wife and his son Walter, who had obtained permission to share his captivity. Most English boys have looked on the rooms in the Tower where this brave man passed more than twelve years, a large portion out of the life on earth, especially on the narrow sleeping-room, to enter which, he had to creep under a low stone archway.